Posts written byTheodore Delimaris

Microsoft’s interest in the open-source community reveals its importance; given the company’s strategic change is some years now towards the embracing of open-source software development. Accordingly, the acquisition of GitHub does not sound surprising, at least not as much as the $7.5bn paid for that acquisition. However, the acquisition of Microsoft is of pure strategic value; the extraordinary $7.5bn paid that equals 3000% of GitHub’s estimated annual turnover means that the financial value of the company itself is not the reason for making such an acquisition. Indeed, Microsoft paid that… Read more

Air France’s ongoing dispute with labor unions has caused more financial woe for the company and its stock price has plummeted. Specifically, the air carrier’s stock price has already fallen by 47% from the start of the year as its financial indicators regarding costs have been disappointing, while its total debt has soared to EUR 12,444m – equal to almost half of its revenues. However, problems at the company go deeper. Its lack of a clear market positioning is a structural problem which is the source of reduced competition and… Read more

The number of UK travelers abroad has been growing strongly in recent years, above 3% year-on-year since 2014. The steadily growing number of tourists abroad in the last two years seems even more remarkable given the fact that the value of the British Pound, which is a determinant of the cost of a holiday abroad, has fallen dramatically in that period. However, there is a new trend hidden behind this paradox; package holidays are not the main option for UK tourists abroad who now seek greater value on the tailored… Read more

There has been a boom in consumer credit in recent years, which has supported consumption as wages have been subdued and inflation has been rising. Although it may seem paradoxical, households in the UK have being increasing their consumption as their real income has been shrinking. Consumer credit has recorded the highest (double-digit) growth rates since the financial crisis of 2008, amid high consumer confidence and a low interest rate environment. Under these terms, the retail and services sector that have grown based on this credit spree are vulnerable in… Read more

Amazon’s latest financials have once again demonstrated exponential growth, as the company continued to increase its advantage over its rivals in the online retail sector. The largest part of its revenues may come from these retail operations, but profitability and growth potential lies in other “overlooked” income streams, such as the web-based services and advertising. This becomes obvious form the fact that Amazon continued to incur operating losses from its retail business, which are the price paid for the growth of revenue. Moreover, these losses mainly come from emerging markets,… Read more

The ongoing depreciation of the pound against the euro has provoked many analysts to bet on the parity of these two currencies by the end of the year. However, even top financial firms that still advise investors to ride the tide against the pound, admit that they do so based on the prevailing uncertainty bias over Brexit. This bias is manifested through the contradictory perceptions of investors over the performance of the UK economy. Particularly, the rising inflation in the UK over the last six months has led to the… Read more

The future of the UK airline industry is likely to be worse after Brexit even after the end of uncertainty, as the free movement of EU citizens is likely to be over. This automatically means that the prosperous international segment of the UK industry will be severely hit by restrictive regulation regarding new limiting open skies agreements and border controls. The termination of open skies agreements will jeopardize the growth of the UK airlines industry, the revenues of which are greatly dependent on UK-EU traffic. Extensively, the UK airline industry… Read more

On June 15, the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England decided once again to keep interest rates at the record low of 0.25%. However, the big news is that the unexpected 5-3 vote on that decision signals a change of a monetary policy, amid rising inflation that threatens households’ real income. This was no surprise as inflation in the UK economy reached 2.9% in May, keeping up its accelerated trend. In fact, this rate has surpassed the target rate of 2% set by the BoE, quicker than expected…. Read more

The ban of transportation of goods and citizens’ movements from and to Qatar, implemented by the most powerful Middle-Eastern countries (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain and Egypt) was a huge diplomatic shock that entails a series of economic effects. Indeed, it seems that politics are a force of impact for a small geographical country that is heavily engaged in global trade. Qatar, one of the richest countries in the world, with large trade surpluses based on gas and oil exports, will have to sustain the consequences of that dependence. Taking into… Read more

The term “US Retail Apocalypse” which is used to describe the downsizing trend of some of the largest US retailers is characteristic of the widespread belief that online retail has transformed the structure of the US retail industry by incurably altering the habits of US consumers. However, such an explanation is proved to be extravagant based on statistics and data regarding e-commerce penetration. In addition, the steady growth of discount retailers is one of the facts that disapprove this theory of e-commerce prevalence as a distribution channel and key reason… Read more

First of all, the preference of French voters is clarified from the polls as three quarters of voting preferences tend to be gathered among center to right wing politicians. This indicates certain prevailing trends of voters such as the need for sense of security and the adjustment of France’’ foreign relations with Europe and the rest of the world. Nevertheless, even immigration and foreign relations are associated with economic policies over unemployment, welfare state, national security and certain industries of the French economy. Especially, unemployment and social protection are fundamental… Read more

Price differentiation of an airline company has been implemented so far on the means of absorbing the consumers’ willingness to pay for the same service, an economy class with frills. In this way, not much price differentiation existed on the value of services as the distinction made was only between economy and business class. This distinction of services was too steep to keep out many consumers that would be available to pay for the price of a ticket with no frills and lower quality of services. The surging penetration of… Read more

It is actually proven that undoing a fatal mistake of relying on an overvalued currency does not correct matters. The no alternatives case for the Greek economy on staying in the single currency union is easy to realize after having a close look at its macroeconomic figures that reflect something of an economic collapse. In fact, the heavy reliance of the Greek economy on services and at the same time its lack of a national productive base rule out the possibility of achieving growth through the adoption of a devalued… Read more